BlueLight App, One More Step Towards Safety For Students

Published September 13th, 2013

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GAINESVILLE – It’s one more step to safety for students walking around campus at the University of Florida. An app for students is putting the blue light emergency towers around campus on their smartphones. The app is designed to give students a greater feeling of security.

While the app is in no way affiliated with the University of Florida, It's giving students a sense of comfort on campus.

"Gainesville is awesome but it can be sketchy sometimes," Alexis Raiford tells me. She is an incoming freshman at the University of Florida and she's not familiar with the area or campus yet. "I do get scared at night. Especially when I am going to a night lab and I have to go through a sketchy ally or something," Raiford said.

There are more than 350 blue light poles scattered all around UF. However some students think they're hard to access from some areas on campus. This is when apps like BlueLight come into play. They work similar to the blue lights on campus except it takes two taps for students to share their location with a dispatcher.

Alan Whitaker another UF student said, "I like the BlueLight app it gives you more sense of security it's right there instead of having to look around to find blue lights."

The app can also send a text message to your top three emergency contacts, letting them know if you're okay or in danger.

Britton Blakey also at UF studying Political Science said, "Hearing about the new text app that sounds even better to me. If for any reason you can't get to one that just seems perfect... That you have your emergency contacts right there, GPS location and the security."

The BlueLight app is not associated with the University of Florida, in fact UF is trying to develop something of their own.

According to the Student Government president who could not comment on camera, Christina Bonarrigo, SG is currently working with the office of Business Affairs to review existing technologies and bring a safety app to the campus community.

Preet Anand, the BlueLight founder says he hopes they can partner up with UF along with other colleges across the nation. "I was in an orientation and I heard someone say that one in four females will be victims of attempted sexual battery by the time they graduate. That's 25 percent of females... That's a crazy high number. We really are changing the equation on how people get help," Anaand said.

Santa Fe College says they are not affiliated with BlueLight app and the University of Florida did not find it appropriate to comment as they were not familiar with this product.

The app is still available to students for free however those students in schools that are associated with the app receive more features. For more details on the app, click here.